How to prevent latex memory overflow

Question

I've got a latex macro that makes small pictures. In that picture I need to draw area. Borders of that area are quadratic bezier curves and that area is to be filled. I did not know how to do it so currently I'm "filling" the area by drawing a plenty of bezier curves inside it...

This slows down typeseting and when a macro is used multiple times (so tex is drawing really a lot of quadratic bezier curves) it produces following error:

! TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [main memory size=3000000].

How can I prevent this error ? (by freeing memory after macro or such...) Or even better how do I fill the area determined by two quadratic bezier curves?

Code that produces error:

\usepackage{forloop}
\usepackage{picture}
\usepackage{eepic}
...
\linethickness{\lineThickness\unitlength}%
\forloop[\lineThickness]{cy}{\cymin}{\value{cy} < \cymax}{%
  \qbezier(\ax, \ay)(\cx, \value{cy})(\bx, \by)%
}%

Here are some example values for variables:

\setlength{\unitlength}{0.01pt}
\lineThickness=20
%cy is just a counter - inital value is not important
\cymin=450 \cymax=900
%from following only the difference between \ax and \bx is important
\ax=0 \ay=0 \bx=550 \by=0

Note: To reproduce the error this code have to execute approximately 150 times (could be more depending on your latex memory settings).

Thanks a lot for any help

Answer 1

I admit I don't know how to manage LaTeX's memory. However, there are better drawing frameworks for LaTeX than the old picture environment, that doesn't seem to support filled bezier paths. Two that comes to mind are the modern-style PGF and Tikz (see also examples) and the more ancient Metapost.